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Nelson: Calgary's spreading garbage empire appears unstoppable

Author of the article:

Chris Nelson • For The Calgary Herald

Publishing date:

May 13, 2019 • 3 minute read

Undated recent supplied image from the City of Calgary shows stockpiled clamshell plastic packaging collected by its blue cart program. Last year, it cost nearly $300,000 to rent semi trailers to house the hard-to-re-process material, a practise dating back to September 2017 and that's now filled 100 of the storage units with 1,600 tonnes of plastics, said a city official. Supplied/ City of Calgary/ Supplied/ City of Calgary

Getting someone to take these items after Calgarians have done their duty by dropping them into their respective blue bins has turned into a logistical nightmare. So much so the city is spending about $300,000 a year just to stockpile the stuff until a solution can be found. (Hey, for a miserly 10 grand, I’ll store a bunch in my backyard.)

The simplest and quickest solution, of course, would be to bury the clamshells and other unwanted rubbish in a landfill on the edge of town, the way it was done for decades all across Canada. It’s not as though we’ve run out of land in this country, for heaven’s sake.

But my guess is such a blast from the past proposal will prove unacceptable to our more socially conscious councillors, so likely we’ll keep scouring the globe to find someone — anyone — who’ll accept this stuff as we continue spending taxpayers’ money on storage.

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Not long ago, China would have taken the darn things as part of the huge piles of Canadian garbage they once happily accepted, but they’re now much pickier. Meanwhile, in the most bizarre recycling episode yet, the federal government is repatriating about 70 shipping containers full of rotting rubbish a Canadian company shipped inadvertently to the Philippines six years ago. Oh, and it’s supposed to be returned through the Port of Vancouver — that’ll please the Greenies in Lotusland.

Isn’t it slightly repugnant that we preen ourselves on being environmentally pure while sending our waste to poorer countries across the globe so their desperate citizens can pick through it to make a meagre living? That’s taking “not in my backyard” to extreme heights. (Don’t even mention the carbon footprint involved in sending waste by container ship across the Pacific — doubled, of course, when it gets shipped back years later.)

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Somehow, the once simple local authority act of picking up household garbage each week has morphed into a mammoth industry, sucking up multimillions of dollars and yet still failing at the basic task involving the efficient and safe disposal of rubbish.

In its own weird way, it’s symbolic of the endless and relentless spread of government itself.

Once we take a simple manoeuvre and build upon it layer after layer of social consciousness tag-teamed with environmental stewardship, we bring to life a Frankenstein’s monster of epic proportions.

And we cannot call a halt. Each step along this relentless route demands another foot forward and more money spent. It takes on a life of its own until this convoluted mess leads to an utterly bizarre game of garbage ping pong with the Philippines.

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Yet, to hint that we should just go back to the way it used to be and instead spend our efforts on reducing packaging and encouraging thrift in what remains such a deplorably disposable society is to be deemed Neanderthal — suitable for recycling, if anyone would consider accepting such a tainted piece of trash.

No, the City of Calgary is on a track it cannot and will not depart from. We’ve built recycling depots and composting centres that are state of the art at a cost of so many millions they cannot now be abandoned.

Meanwhile, we have a rainbow nation of bins in our backyards as garbage police prowl to ensure they’re suitably filled. And at city hall, they pray, given time, we’ll find someone to take our clamshells.

However, one day, who knows when, the money to fund this will finally run out. Then some clever so-and-so at some future council meeting will pipe up and declare, “Hey, maybe we could just bury this stuff.”

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